I have aquired an older Colt "Official Police" with a 5" Bbl, and was thinking about how to load it for SD. I am with Griz on this, as I have a ton of Hornady 158gr. SWHP's and I think they will make a dandy round for this gun.
I am no expert by any means, but I think that a soft lead 158gr. SWHP doing about 950 to 1000fps. would be very effective for most SD scenarios.
In my humble opinion, that would be about the most effective combo there is for the .38sp. Which is still a very good SD round, I believe. I do not think it would have survived for 100 years if it did not work. Is it a .357, .45acp.,or .40 Smith?, no, but to my way of thinking, and from the opinion of countless others, given proper shot placement, and that is more imporrtant by far than the round you are using, the .38 can be a very effective round.
Of course there are many high tech loads out ther from Speer, Winchester, etc, which may be more effective, but the load I have described should do just fine, IMO.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "DEWC"? I am not familiar with the term.
Willy

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I took a handful of .38's loaded with Lee 358-158-RF ("round flat") bullets with me to the range Tuesday night for bullseye practice (loaded with 4.5 grains of Rex 3 powder -- about like Universal) and a box of full wadcutters. The RF bullet has a big flat nose; it's more like a truncated cone with hardly any taper to it. But I shot one target with 5 RF's and 5 wadcutters and there was a big difference in the size of the holes in the paper. The wadcutters made a perfect .36" hole (just like you would expect) and the RF's made approximately .30" holes with a little gray halo around them. That's a lot bigger difference in area than it sounds.

The 158 LSWCHP bullet might be better still, I don't know. But the wadcutter beats the pants off any other non-expanding bullet. (I knew it would, but I was shocked at how much difference it made) Of course, bad guys are not made out of construction paper...

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The other caution is that if you seat wadcutters flush with the case mouth, as is done for light target loads, there won't be room for much powder. You'll want to seat them out a little further for higher power levels without raising pressure too high.

I'm roll-crimping them lightly into the crimp groove; about .10" of lead is sticking out. That helps a little with the speed loader too, but not much.

Sometimes when I load them really hot for a .357, I roll-crimp them a lot tighter, with about .25" sticking out (and a *lot* more powder. Don't worry, those won't chamber in a .38 Special) I want to try those out in my Marlin this spring.

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"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun"

I have three loads for SD in the 38-
Fc brass, 6.0 of Unique or 6.1 of 4756, 125 grain JHP, CCI 500.
WW brass, 5.5 of Unique, 140 grain Speer JHP, CCI 500.
WW brass, 5.5 of 4756, 158 Speer swaged LHP, CCI 500.
All 3 loads will do the job at house ranges and under 21 feet on the street.

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Beware the man that only owns one gun; he probably knows how to use it.
I just hope my ship comes in before my dock rots.

135gr Gold Dot has much more robust expansion through clothing, an barriers in short barrels than the old 158gr LSWCHP. If you have a 4", 6" barrel or longer then you can expect the lead bullet do penetrate, and deform reasonably well.

Barnes bullets also work very well through heavy clothing. If you load warm, and have a long barrel you can probably use the 140 gr XPB with good results.

Since I have never shot anyone, nor have I seen anyone who has been shot with a .38 special, I will have to rely on what I have read from those who have studied such things.
The last articles I read on the topic (a few years back) seemed to be unanimous on choosing a 158gr lead SWC at normal 38 special velocities. The Federal Nyclad was chosen as the best.
Intuition, from reading what some of you have posted, seems to indicate that the wadcutter has more "smack", due to the full caliber meplat. I would also think that would be better... again, only intuitively.
If larger meplat area is "better", then it would stand to reason that the full wadcutter would be best, followed by Lee's 158gr round/flat nose (looks like an LBT boolit), then the 158gr SWC. I think the round nose offerings are probably next to worthless for SD, judging from stories I've read about the military using it.

GP100Man, That is very interesting "ballistic test".
I have got a stretch of bank down by my creek that gets pretty soft after a rain, and no rocks. I am going to give that a try, Using the Hornady swaged,(soft) 158gr. SWHP's, Leadhead 158gr. hard Keiths', and 125gr. XTPs' loaded towards the higher end velocity wise for the given weights.
Good idea, thanks for the tip!
Willy

__________________
Don' keep shooting them until you think they are dead, Keep shooting them until they think they are dead.- Clint Smith

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